Jane Perlez, Jakarta – Indonesia's next president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, moved swiftly up the military ranks during the authoritarian rule of Gen. Suharto and then played a back-seat role in the undoing of that government. He is considered a steady, broadly educated man who many here believe is the first person with a suitable background and sufficient training to become president since the country's transition to democracy began six years ago.

There is also much that is unknown about the general. He supports the secular tradition of Indonesia, where most people are Muslim. But how he will deal with the thorny issues of Islam and terrorism – a subject on which the government and Muslim groups have remained largely silent so far – remains unclear.

With more than half of the votes counted after the election on Monday, results showed that General Yudhoyono, 55, won a convincing victory over the incumbent, Megawati Sukarnoputri. With more than 77 million votes counted Tuesday night, General Yudhoyono had won 60 percent and Mrs. Megawati 39 percent, according to the Indonesian election commission.

In contrast to Mrs. Megawati, who took little interest in government but reveled in the pomp of being head of state, General Yudhoyono will immerse himself in details and is likely to play down the role of singular leader, an army colleague said.

"He believes in the organization," said the colleague, a former general, Agus Widjojo, who was General Yudhoyono's boss in the military. "He's aware that he's only one element in the decision-making process. He doesn't come from one of those charismatic, hero styles of leadership."

General Yudhoyono must wait for Mrs. Megawati to concede defeat before claiming victory, a process that may be several days away. He stayed closeted at his home in Bogor, outside Jakarta, on Tuesday, meeting with his running mate, Jusuf Kalla, and campaign officials.

The general faces big problems: one of the worst-performing economies in the vibrant Asian region, rampant corruption and a homegrown terror network that the police say may be poised for an attack.

As coordinating minister for security under Mrs. Megawati, he was more outspoken than many in the government on the threat of terrorism and the nature of Jemaah Islamiyah, the radical Islamic group that has been blamed for three terror attacks in the past two years.

But he was reluctant to push for more stringent measures against the group, said a Western official who dealt with him. Now that he is to become president, he needs to throw such caution aside and not find reasons not to act, the official said.

General Yudhoyono was born on September 9, 1949, in Pacitan, a small town in east Java that is likened to Dayton, Ohio, by an American friend, Dennis Heffernan, publisher of the Van Zorge Report, a biweekly review of Indonesia's politics and economy. "A nice clean little town," said Mr. Heffernan, who accompanied the general on some campaign swings.

After emerging at the top of his class in the military academy in 1973, General Yudhoyono was selected to go to the United States in 1976 for military training at Fort Benning, Ga.

That was at the height of the warm relationship between the United States and the Suharto government, which was viewed in Washington at the time as a bulwark against Communism in Southeast Asia. In 1990, he was selected for a yearlong course at the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

In part because of those two stints in the United States under the International Military Education and Training Program, the Bush administration viewed General Yudhoyono as the best pick of the candidates in the presidential election.

The general wants a full resumption of military relations with the United States, General Widjojo said. The training program was stopped more than a decade ago after the Clinton administration objected to human rights abuses by the military under General Suharto.

By the mid-1990's, General Yudhoyono and some like-minded colleagues like General Widjojo began to work on a plan called the New Paradigm, which called for the military to step back from its upfront role in civilian affairs.

As the crisis around General Suharto's presidency reached a peak in 1998 after the collapse of the Indonesian currency, General Yudhoyono began meeting with one of the country's prominent Muslim leaders, Nurcholish Madjid, to find a way for General Suharto to resign.

In a less flattering light, the book "Indonesian Destinies" by Theodore Friend describes how General Yudhoyono encouraged a group of Muslim and Christian leaders to look into the bombing of dozens of churches across Indonesia on Christmas Eve of 2000.

The general, according to the book, acknowledged that the facts of the bombings implicated some "former colleagues and superiors" of his. But when the group submitted a draft decree to investigate the matter, the author says General Yudhoyono declined to pursue the matter.

By all accounts, the general is an avid reader and book buyer. From his bookshelves it is clear that the general prefers serious reading peppered with a splash of light fare. "Debt of Honor" by Tom Clancy and "The World's Most Dangerous Places" by Robert Young Pelton are among the books in his library. "On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War" by Harry G. Summers and "Napoleon: How He Did It: The Memoirs of Baron Fain, First Secretary of the Emperor's Cabinet" are also there.